Monday, March 5, 2012

Earlier a commenter told me I should stop bashing religion. This left me wondering, where did they see me bashing religion? I feel like I've mostly said neutral things about it lately. I should do more religion bashing!

The problem of evil asks: How can there be a all-powerful and all-good god if there is evil in the world? Obviously this only applies to religions with an all-powerful and all-good god, and I might as well say that I'm thinking of Christianity in particular.

I'm not sure I've ever talked about the problem of evil before. I don't really like it, because there's no math involved. And the argument is too sprawling, with a multitude of rebuttals. In fact, we even have the word "theodicy", which means a defense against the problem of evil.

Most theodicies are not very compelling, but that's not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about how theodicies, above and beyond being bad arguments, are also evil arguments. That is, many theodicies involve defending evil, or denying the existence of certain kinds of evils.

The free will defense

The free will defense says that evil exists in the world because of human free will. The obvious problem with the free will defense is that it ignores natural evils, like hurricanes and disease. But let me tell you about some of the other kinds of evils it ignores.

There is the kind of evil which is caused by ignorance of the consequences of a free action. To use a silly example, someone could open a door, not knowing someone was there to be smacked in the face. Or, someone could buy a diamond, not knowing that the money is used to fund a terrible war. Or if someone votes for X political party, not knowing that God truly endorses the opposing party (har har). This is evil not caused by free will, but by ignorance, which is arguably a hindrance to true freedom.

There are various kinds of responses to the problem of natural evil. One of them is that natural evil was released into the world by Adam and Eve's original sin. Or, if you're Pat Robertson, natural evil was released into the world by modern actions such as homosexuality. Or if you're Alvin Plantinga, natural evil was caused by the free will of nonhuman beings, like angels or spirits. Presumably, the means of causation are magical (divine), but it's kind of funny that earthquakes and hurricanes mostly occur where you would expect them if they were caused by chaotic physical processes.

Now here's another problem being ignored: the sheer injustice and cruelty of this situation. We deserve to be punished for the sin of a couple ancestors? Or for the sins of other people within our society? Or for the sins of some otherworldly beings we don't even know about? The causal chain leading from sin to natural evil isn't very clear, but it's hard to imagine that God really doesn't have any control over it. Is it interfering with the free will of gay people to change ocean temperatures and prevent a hurricane? As far as I'm concerned, this theodicy only succeeds by conceding that God is not actually all-good.

The greater good

There are a variety of other theodicies which claim that natural evils are necessarily to achieve the greater good. Suffering builds character! (Except when it kills you, then it builds character among your relatives.)

For some reason, theodicy makes me think of classic Calvin and Hobbes

Or, if it's not character building, perhaps the lesser evil prevents some other greater evil. Like the story about the guy who breaks his leg, and thus avoids a car accident. God couldn't think of another way, that's not in his omnibenevolent nature.

I see this explanation as rather awful, and not just in the lacking-evidence sense. It's also awful because now we're all supposed to see the silver lining in our suffering. Our suffering is for a greater good! Screw that. It seems to me that evil comes about by completely natural means, irrespective of what ultimate good will come it. People with terminal illnesses aren't all dying for the greater good, and it's awful to suggest that they are, or that this is how it should be.

Other theodicies off the top of my head include: "Good cannot exist without evil, just as black and white cannot exist without each other," and, "All wrongs are righted in the afterlife." I've decided to cut this post short, so I leave it to the reader to decide if there is anything evil about these theodicies. Are they denying some particular kind of evil? Are they being callous to people in suffering? Or perhaps they are not evil arguments at all, just uncompelling?

3 comments:

I've spoken to many Atheists about this problem of evil and I always find that everything boils down to the definition of evil and to what personality we give to God.

They tends - and I think that this is your case as well - to reason into absolute: absolute evil, absolute free will, absolute goodness. And all from the point of view of a western man/woman that has rejected Christianity.

As far as I'm concerned, there is no problem of evil because God, from our human point of view, is NOT all-good. God can causes evil (again from our point of view) by killing people or allowing kids to suffer. The Bible is very open about that. Now God is not all-evil (again from our point of view) because he has promised to bring back to life people that suffered in this life. There is something that is missing from your argumentation. These people will then life forever without any evil. Now, you might say that it still means that God allow for evil to exist during 70 to 90 years. However, from a physics point of view, you can argue that actually, evil is negligible. Indeed what is 90 years compared to eternity? A negligible amount of time...

"They tends - and I think that this is your case as well - to reason into absolute: absolute evil, absolute free will, absolute goodness."

I don't understand what you mean. I have not claimed that God is either all-good or all-evil. This essay is just about how other people claim that God is all-good, and in defending this claim, deny or diminish the importance of evil.

"As far as I'm concerned, there is no problem of evil because God, from our human point of view, is NOT all-good."

That's another theodicy I didn't mention. Thanks for mentioning it.

"Now God is not all-evil (again from our point of view) because he has promised to bring back to life people that suffered in this life....However, from a physics point of view, you can argue that actually, evil is negligible. Indeed what is 90 years compared to eternity?"

So you're basically saying that this is yet another theodicy that diminishes the importance of evil? It's like I didn't even have to say it myself.

I know I'm commenting on an old post, but I do have some thoughts on the issue.

The "All wrongs are righted in the afterlife" argument is a simple dodge of the problem. It doesn't deny that evil exists, it just claims that it will be cured in the afterlife. I don't think that it is an evil argument in and of itself, but it could be evil if it is used to dismiss or ignore suffering.

The other argument, that good and evil require each other, is both wrong and evil. It is wrong because there is no reason that good must be contrasted with evil in order to exist. Good could be contrasted with indifference, or greater good and lesser good could be contrasted. Good could be contrasted even with the idea of evil: even if no evils existed, so long as people could imagine evil existing, they could contrast that idea of evil with the reality of goodness.

The argument that good requires evil is like the argument that evil serves a greater good: it is an unnecessary justification of evil, and is thus evil itself.